E·ratio

Issue 19

 

 

 

Acta Stochastica (for Jacob Bernoulli)

 

Mark Young

 

 

 

 

1. Compound Interest

 

“Reality, my reality, is a set of alternate realities. As are your realities also. & yet, even if we gathered up, created a set of, all the sets of alternate realities in the world, it would never be complete because a set cannot contain itself. So, therefore, another set, & then another, & another. Infinite Chinese boxes if you like. Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem in action. Zeno’s paradox.” 

 

 

 

2. The Future of OpenID

 

The east coast,
    with its open
        concept floor-
            plan & periodic

            fires, is a prime
        site for observing
    the ceremonial
destruction of

shoulder-fired
    missiles &
        counterfeit
            banana flambés.

 

 

 

3. At the western extremity

 

          The passage from

               apothecary to surrogate

     deathbed mother has,

                           by any metric, its fair

                    share of setbacks.

 

 

 

4. An / analysis of / surface drinking water

 

                            A lobe of the lung
                  is the standard
                       tool for filtering
                                      ephemeral down-
                         loads when their
                     social security
                              numbers are not
                            routinely displayed.

 

 

 

5. Exposition

 

      Each takes
                          unto itself
something apart
from its
              essential being. He
wrote: feldspar
.
                          He wrote:
      the night
.
                          Differentiation.

 

 

 

6. A Play in Four Acts

 

M. Kabuki?
I.
    No.

Ф


M.
Bunraku?
E.
   No.

Ф


M.
  Nō?
E.
   Beckett.

Ф


M.
  Godot?
E.
    No.

 

     (Curtain)

 

 

 

7. A / minimalist poem / from Oprah Winfrey

 

soccer
mom

crystal
meth

 

 

 

8. Cable stitch

 

In the
middle of the day
I catch Kurosawa's
   Ran
.       Sometimes
                               a chance 
                     encounter
           promotes a 
poem. Some times 
it is its own poem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Young’s essay, Stochastic Acts: the search string as poetry, is online at Amanda Earl’s Angelhouse Press.  His most recent books are the e-book Asemic Colon from The Red Ceilings Press, The Codicils, a 600-page selection of poems written between 2009 & 2012, out from Otoliths, & the eclectic world from gradient books of Finland.  He lives in North Queensland in Australia.   

 

 


                                               <  e·  >